Great Gildersleeve
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GREAT GILDERSLEEVE Charles Stumpf -,Ben Ohmart Introduction by Shirley Mitchell WorldRadioHistory THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE Charles Stumpf Ben Ohmart Introduction by Shirley Mitchell WorldRadioHistory The Great Gildersleeve All Rights Reserved © zooz by Charles Stumpf and Ben Ohmart No part of this book may be reproduced or trans- mitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address: BearManor Media Post Office Box 75o Boalsburg, PA 16827 bearmanormedia.com Cover design by Rick Radtke, Jr. Published in the USA by Bear Manor Media. ISBN 0-9714570-0-X iv WorldRadioHistory Th Hal Peag, Willard Waterman and the talented cast and crew of The Great Gildersleeve. A show that will outlive us all. V WorldRadioHistory ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Terry L. Black Dr. Page Peary Earl Diamond Photofest Louise Erickson Rick Radtke, Jr. Don Frey Jay Rath Richard Giblin Terry Salomonson Carol A. Herstek Clair Schulz Jay Hickerson Greg A. Shreeve L. Wayne Hicks Chris Silva Tim Hollis Jon Guyot Smith Dave Hunter Alan P. Spater Brian Kistler Elizabeth B. Thomsen Bill Kizer Rebecca Varner Jan Lubek Laura Wagner Fred McFadden Dave Warren Walt Mitchell Mike Wheeler Bob Olson Lee White Gloria Holliday Peary Barbara Whiting And avery special thank you to Shirley Mitchell for her wonderful introduction. vii WorldRadioHistory Introduction by ,Shirley Mitchell When Iwas very, very young, about eight years old, Iwas acrazy movie-goer. My mother used to take my brother and me to the movies while she went to help my father at work. So having been at the movies from maybe twelve noon until eight at night, that was our babysitter. And Icould imitate everything that Ihad seen. Iactually started winning amateur contests when Iwas eight years old. Iwon The Children's Hour with Jules Blair in Toledo, Ohio. Iwould do Garbo and Una Merkel and Katherine Hepburn, and that's how Istarted doing the southern belle. Leila, Gildersleeve's girlfriend, is probably alittle part of all those actresses Iwatched. ix WorldRadioHistory Idid about eight shows aweek during The Great Gildersleeve. The Bob Crosby Old Gold Show, Fibber McGee &Molly, The Jack Carson Show, Red Skelton, and abunch of CBS shows like Suspense. Sometimes Iwould have two and three shows a day! There were asmall group of us who did that. Iwas probably the busiest actress who played every- one's sweetheart during those years. Being so much in demand, Ijust loved work- ing. Iwas very young and it was aball. Iwould finish ashow at CBS and Iwould have page boys holding certain doors open for me, so Icould run from CBS to NBC, and Frank Pittman would hand me my script, and Iwould go on the air! It was magic time. Radio is my favorite medium. You didn't have to put makeup on, you didn't have to get dressed, you didn't have to audition that much: the director handed you the script and you read. It was alot simpler. We all stole the money and we knew it. And of all the shows Idid at that time, The Great Gildersleeve was certainly my favorite. Working with Hal, you had to learn so much, he was such a pro. And we had the right chemistry. At the begin- ning he scared me to death! Because he'd been a very successful actor on Fibber. But there wasn't anyone on Gildersleeve you couldn't like, except maybe Earle Ross because he played Judge Hooker, and he played him so brilliantly that you thought of him as being obnoxious! He was perfect. WorldRadioHistory Hal was agenius with the Gildersleeve char- acter. In fact, Hal was that man. And NBC had always had Willard Waterman in the background because he was aperfect imitation of Hal. The difference between the two men Ithink is that Willard was amore self-effacing man. He was this tall, gentle giant. He was 6' 4" or 6' 5". He was dear and sweet and kind. Hal really was Gildersleeve. Willard was kind of laid back, and pretended to be Gildersleeve. He was wonderful. Absolutely won- derful. He never tried to imitate the voice, it was always there. But as aperformer, Hal was so Gildersleeve. He was so perfect for it. He was rather short and chubby and Ialways had the feel- ing that he needed to prove himself alittle, but I never had that feeling with Willard. Leila was this typically southern (and in this day and age, Idon't think she'd be accepted as much as she was then) helpless (pretended to be!), outra- geous woman. She was totally dishonest, but she was so smart with her feminine wiles. The most intelli- gent female Ihave ever known! Anything she wanted, whether she told you the truth or not, you bought it. Because she was so charming. In asense naïve, but street smart. It was asublime pleasure playing her. Ithink she was really in love with Gildersleeve, but she was also playing with him. She wanted to get him. He had abig house, and he was a"dahlin'." xi WorldRadioHistory Iremember when Gildersleeve was supposed to marry Leila, Iwent to aflorist and got abouquet, and Igot alittle silk dress, and we dressed for the audience. And when Iwas leaving the show to get married, Hal came out with abouquet of flowers, and Istarted to cry. Ijust couldn't stop. There weren't too many backstage escapades or stories. You worked too hard! We would come in at 9AM in the morning on aSunday and rehearse until noon and then go home and change because we were always in pants and whatever. At 2PM we were back at NBC, dressed, where we started to rehearse and at 4we did the show for the east coast. Then we broke and went to the Brown Derby to have dinner, then at 8we did the second show. There wasn't that much slack time. We were so immersed in the show. Iclothed myself in the character of Leila. It just rolled off me. When Icame out on stage the audience would scream because Iwas so much younger than what they expected. That was the show Iloved most of anything I've done. And I'm still getting fan mail from it, and from my roles on Lug and Please Don't Eat the Daisies. It's incredible! Ifeel so lucky to have been a part of such awonderful show and cast. They truly were the Golden Days. xii WorldRadioHistory THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE WorldRadioHistory WorldRadioHistory xvi WorldRadioHistory adio's first spin-off series was The Great RGildersleeve that premiered over the NBC network on Sunday evening, August 31, 1941 at 6:3o PM. "Spin-off" is the term used when aradio or television series is centered around acharacter who was introduced in aprevious series. Don Quinn was aformer cartoonist, turned writer who created acharacter named "Gildersleeve" on the Fibber McGee and Molly pro- gram in 1936. Quinn apparently felt that the name had ahumorous connotation. However, the name was not just afigment of his imagination. It was an authentic family name that can be traced back to I3th Century England. Originally spelled Gyldersleve, its meaning is "sleeve trimmed with gold." There are two listings of the name in Webster's Biographical Dictionary: 1 WorldRadioHistory Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, American classical scholar. Born 1831 he served in the Confederate Army and became aprofessor of Greek at the University of Virginia in 1885. Four years later he founded and edited the American Journal of Philology. In 1867 he authored the text book, The Latin Grammar Virginia Chrocheron Gildersleeve, American educator born in 1877. In 1900 she was ateacher of English at Barnard College where she became dean in 1911. There have doubtlessly been other notable Gildersleeves. Writer Quinn first used the name in the script for the McGee broadcast of April 13, 1936. The first actor to play the role was Cliff Arquette. The same character reappeared on the broadcast of May 4' h when he was given the first name of Cliff. More than four years elapsed before Quinn used the name once more on September 2o, 1938. This time around the character was called Widdicomb P. Gildersleeve and he was the president of ababy carriage factory and the role was played by adifferent actor, Hal Peary. Then on April 25, 1939 Peary was heard as optometrist, Dr. Donald Gildersleeve. The character then underwent achange of occupation and when he was heard from again on June 2o he became adentist, Dr. Leo Gildersleeve. 2 WorldRadioHistory Finally on October IT 1939 which was the 219th broadcast of the McGee program, the charac- ter's name became Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve. As Fibber's pompous neighbor he was aperfect foil for the Wistful Vista windbag. Actor Peary had ahand in helping to develop the character. The name Throckmorton was bor- rowed from his street address in Chicago. The actor also stated that the middle initial "P" represented Peary. Other sources have claimed that the P stood for Philharmonic. Be what may, suffice it say that Throckmorton's middle initial was P. Once he settled into the role, Peary's dis- tinctive voice became so closely associated with the character that he could no longer double in other roles. Hal Peary's first love had always been music and as the bombastic Gildersleeve he would have no opportunity to sing on the McGee program. After nearly three years of such confinement he felt he was badly in need of a change and considered giving up the role.